


Birth of the Resistance

by lirin



Category: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Thorne & Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Voldemort Wins, Battle of Hogwarts, Chocolate Box Treat, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-23 18:40:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9671186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lirin/pseuds/lirin
Summary: After Harry dies, the ones who remain keep right on fighting.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [primeideal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/primeideal/gifts).



Harry Potter was dead.

For a moment, all was silent in the Great Hall. Nagini slithered along the floor as Lord Voldemort gazed down on the body of his fallen foe. Nobody else moved. To move would have been to acknowledge that this was no dream, that their last hope had failed.

The sun was rising; its red beams shone in the window, glinting brightly in everyone’s faces as if it did not realize what had just happened. It seemed impossible that the day should dawn just the same as it had when Harry was alive.

And then one of the Death Eaters began to whoop with glee. The others joined in, and the moment was broken. There was a sudden rush of movement: the Death Eaters charging to attack, and the scattered defenders seeking to flee.

Hermione found herself caught up in the rush of bodies. She seized Ron’s hand—she couldn’t bear the thought of being separated from him on top of everything else that had happened. She realized they were in the entrance hall and wondered how they had ended up there already. As the crowd continued to press on, out the double doors, Hermione seized Ron’s hand and pulled him after her up the marble stairway. If they followed the others in running tightly-packed across the castle grounds, they’d be easy prey for the Death Eaters to take potshots at. In here, they’d be equally trapped, or more so—but maybe they could hold out for a few more hours. Hermione didn’t dare hope for more.

A few others of the castle’s erstwhile defenders were also climbing the stairs, but most stayed on the ground level, following the path of least resistance. Outside, flashes lit up the sky—whether fireworks celebrating Voldemort’s triumph or spells killing more of her friends, Hermione could not tell. She pulled Ron down an empty corridor, still running for all they were worth. Neither of them had yet spoken a word, she realized—nor could she think of anything to say.

Two more corridors and another staircase and they’d at least managed to get themselves thoroughly lost. Ron and Hermione stumbled to a stop in the middle of an empty corridor, then ducked into a niche where a statue had once stood as their sense of self-preservation belatedly kicked in.

“Did we lose them?” Ron whispered.

“For now, I think,” Hermione replied. “ _Homenum revelio_. Oh!” She turned around to look behind them. “There’s someone in that classroom, I think. Just one, though.”

“Whoever they are, they must not have been in the Hall when—when—at the final battle, I mean,” Ron said. “Nobody who was there could have gotten here before us.”

“It might be someone on our side, then,” Hermione said. “But it may not be. Watch your back.” They crept forward, side by side, wands held ready.

The door opened as they neared it. “In here!” came an urgent whisper from inside. “Get out of sight before you’re seen!”

Hermione and Ron scrambled into the classroom.

“What are you playing at, standing in the middle of corridors and tossing around revealing spells without a thought? You won’t last an hour without more sense than that. But then I suppose that’s what I might have expected from a couple of Gryffindors.” It was Severus Snape.

Harry had said Snape could be trusted, back in that whispered conversation before he left for the forest. But then Harry had also said that he wouldn’t turn himself over to Voldemort, and that he knew they could kill Nagini, and a thousand other things they shouldn’t have believed, and so Ron and Hermione aimed their wands at Snape anyway.

Snape didn’t even bother to raise his own wand in defense. He just raised an eyebrow and said coldly, “This is no time to waste time. If you want to have a chance at surviving the next twenty-four hours—much less continuing the fight against the Dark Lord—you need to stop jumping at shadows and get out of sight.”

“Do you even _care_ that Harry’s dead?” Ron asked without lowering his wand.

“What makes you think this is a time for _caring_?” Snape spat. “Foolish Gryffindors. Save it for when we aren’t at risk of imminent death.” He strode across the classroom and waved his wand at the corner. In response to his spell, the stones moved aside, forming an arched entrance to a hidden passage.

Hermione gasped. She had had no idea there was a passage anywhere near here. There certainly wasn’t any indication of it on Harry’s map. “How long has that been there?”

“Are you coming or not?” was Snape’s reply. He hurried them into the passage and sealed the entrance behind them. Almost simultaneously, all three of them cast _Lumos_ so they could see what lay ahead. The passage angled up at a steep angle interspersed with stairways, and it wasn’t until they had climbed what felt like several floors that he answered her question. “As far as I know, it’s as old as the school. There have always been several passages that only Dumble—that only the Headmaster and the Heads of Houses knew about. So only four besides us, and all of them are on our side. Nobody else even knows the passages exist.”

“So there’s a contingency plan, then?” Hermione asked.

“Some of us didn’t place all of our trust in your friend Mr. Potter,” he said.

Hermione stopped abruptly, hands on her hips. Ron, behind her, nearly crashed into her before he realized she had stopped. “Don’t you speak about Harry that way!” Hermione snarled. She would rather have yelled it, but she didn’t dare risk it without knowing how thick the stone walls that surrounded them were.

Several steps ahead of them, Snape stopped and turn around, robes billowing. “If you need me to carefully select my every word to cater to your weak sensibilities, Miss Granger, then our partnership ends here.”

“Wait a second, what partnership?” Ron asked.

Snape glared at him. “Are we working together to fight the Dark Lord, or are we not? I’m not exactly spoilt for choice right now.” He stepped back down the stairs, until he was close enough that the light from his wand melded with the light from their own. “This has been a major setback. Everyone who has survived will need to fight—or give up. The choice is yours.”

“And what about you?” Ron said, accusing. “What choice will you make? It would be easy for you to cozy back up to Voldemort.”

Snape raised his wand. Ron already had his up, ready for a fight. Hermione stepped to the side to avoid blocking Ron, and raised her own wand.

“I’ve been fighting against the Dark Lord for as long as you two have been alive,” Snape growled. “I’m not about to give up just because some two-bit Gryffindor has— _Protego_!” He broke off to deflect the curses that Hermione and Ron had aimed at his head. He stepped to the side of the passageway where they could not simultaneously attack him, deflecting their further attacks as he went. 

It felt good to fight, Hermione thought. It felt like she was doing something. Ever since Harry—since what happened in the Great Hall, they’d been running and hiding. She wanted to fight.

But this wasn’t the right occasion or the right person to be fighting. Snape might be able to assist them. And there were few enough people who could do that right now that they needed to accept his assistance, even if it came with insulting words. Hermione lowered her wand and put a hand on Ron’s arm, encouraging him to do the same.

Snape stood watching them, his wand still raised but not attacking. They eyed each other silently in the dim, narrow passage.

Suddenly, Hermione gasped. She was certain she’d heard footsteps coming up from behind them. “You said nobody else knew about this passage!” she exclaimed, raising her wand to aim at Snape again. Beside her, Ron followed suit.

“That’s not exactly what I said,” he replied. “If you could corral your Gryffindors, it would be appreciated.”

“Some of us have just lost someone we cared about,” came the reply from behind Ron and Hermione, “so in return I’d appreciate it if you’d bite your tongue.” Ron and Hermione whirled around to see Professor McGonagall standing there. She was still dressed in the tartan dressing gown she had been wearing when they first arrived at the castle the previous night, though it now bore several scorch marks from incompletely-blocked spells. Her hair, not tightly pinned up for once, was also scorched, and partially burned away on one side. Her cheeks were marked with tear-tracks, but her eyes were wide and watchful. “Just because you claim to be on our side doesn’t mean you can say whatever you wish.”

“I’m not the one taking offense at every last word when we don’t have time for infighting,” Snape replied. “Now do you have a plan to suggest, or shall I provide one?”

“A plan for the next hour, the next month, or the next lifetime?” McGonagall snapped.

He raised an eyebrow. “Which of those are you offering?”

She glared at him for a few moments, unwilling to back down, then sighed. “None of them, at the moment. I haven’t had a chance to think, only to react. What do you have to suggest?”

Snape presented his thoughts on the matter coolly, as if he were teaching a lesson in school. “It would be best to avoid offensive action for a while. The Dark Lord’s troops are at their most motivated right now, but with any luck—and perhaps a few discreet pushes—they should soon be distracted by squabbling among themselves. But in the meantime, we’ll need to concentrate on undercover work, especially rescuing survivors of the battle. Later, there will be time for acts of more active resistance. But the three of you, at least, will probably never be able to show your faces in the wizarding world again. As for myself, I believe it would be wisest if I do my best to retain my position in the Dark Lord’s inner circle—unless any of you have an objection?”

McGonagall did not acknowledge the sarcasm, but simply accepted the plan. “I have no better idea,” she said. “For now—the next few days, at least—we must concentrate on rescuing who we can.”

“Without placing our lives at too much risk,” Snape pointed out. “Vanquishing the Dark Lord is and has always been more important than the life of any one of us.”

Hermione felt a flash of anger at this statement, but tamped it down. Even if Harry’s death wasn’t as important to him as it was to the three of them, he was still right. Defeating the Dark Lord was worth dying for.

“Now is not the time for a heroic last stand,” McGonagall agreed. “We’ll save that for some other time, if necessary.” She stepped forward. “But we do need to find a way to rescue survivors. Ron, come with me and we’ll go up the West Tower to create a distraction. Setting it on fire should suffice, I think. Severus, you and Hermione head to the passage’s exit in the castle grounds and see if you can help a few of our friends inside to safety while everyone is distracted.”

Snape didn’t object, so Hermione didn’t either. In moments, both Ron and Professor McGonagall were gone up the stairs, without a word or even a touch of the hand. Hermione was alone for the first time since Harry had fallen—well, not alone, but she didn’t think Professor Snape particularly counted. She scrambled after him as he hurried down the passage, retracing their steps to the archway where they had entered, and beyond, climbing down and down until she was sure they must be underground.

Finally, the passage flattened out. Snape still hadn’t spoken a word. Hermione wished she was with anyone but him. If only Harry could be here. She still didn’t feel like he was really dead. But then it hadn’t been that long; it was to be expected that it hadn’t sunk in yet. So many dead—Tonks, Lupin, Fred, Neville—they all seemed in her mind as if they had just gone away for a while. They couldn’t all be gone forever.

But this still wasn’t any better of a time to think about such things than it had been earlier. There would be time to grieve later; right now there was still a battle raging outside.

Hermione realized Snape had come to a halt, and she stopped abruptly, barely managing not to crash into him. She didn’t want to give him any more incentive to criticize her than he already had.

Snape indicated a ladder that led to a hatch above their head. “This opens beneath a cluster of bushes on the grounds, so unless they’ve been burnt we should be protected from view. We’re near the entrance gates, about halfway between them and the quidditch pitch. We’ll slip through, keeping the hatch open, and remain out of sight until McGonagall fires off her distraction. At that point, we do our best to find living defenders and get them into the passage without—and this is imperative—attracting the attention of any of the Dark Lord’s people. If any of them discover this passage, it will place the lives of everyone we save at risk.” He stepped up on the ladder. “Can I trust you not to endanger our position for lives that can’t be saved?”

“We will never be friends,” Hermione said with a glare, “but we’re on the same side. Yes, you can trust me.”

“Why would I want to be friends with someone who couldn’t be bothered to try for a single NEWT, despite having a better head on her shoulders than most of the students who did?” Snape muttered.

“How could I, I wasn’t even at the school,” Hermione said, puzzling over whether that had been intended as a compliment or not.

“As soon as I open this hatch, we have to be absolutely silent,” Snape said, ignoring her reply. “Are you ready?”

Hermione stood at the base of the ladder, ready to climb as soon as he cleared the top. “Yes, I’m ready.”

Snape looked at her carefully. “No matter what’s happened,” he said, “no matter what anyone may think, the war isn’t over yet. It may yet be possible to defeat the Dark Lord.” He opened the hatch, looked around briefly and scrambled through.

Snape’s words were far from the most encouraging thing Hermione had ever heard, but they were better than nothing. She had lost friends, but she still had a purpose to fight for. She scrambled through the hatch after Snape. Together, hidden in a thicket of bushes, they waited for flames on the West Tower.


End file.
